


and tear our pleasures with rough strife

by havisham



Category: Captain America (2011), Captain America (Comics)
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, Manpain, the future isn't all that was promised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:16:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Had we but world enough, and time / We'd still manage to fuck it up somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Past mentions of Bucky/Natasha + timeshifted manpain + pwp (pain with porn) + a classical entreaty to bone _while you still can_

Okay, so here’s the thing about the future — he can’t stand it.

The music’s all wrong, the clothes don’t feel right. Everything that tastes good, _feels_ good, is bad, bad for you, bad for everybody. He’s taken to an IKEA, on a mission to furnish his tiny apartment, and he breaks right there, crammed in between a platform cart that keeps banging into his shins and a bookcase that’s just plastic overlaid with pine.

He can’t fucking _stand_ it.

And it’s not like he can talk to anyone, or that anyone knows him except Steve, Natalia, and Fury. Not that he _wants_ to talk to any of them. (He doesn’t.) He’s out of Fury’s sights for now, which is just as well. Well, _sight_ , that is to say, and there’s no way would he be able to make that joke in front of the man himself. That’s a line even he’s not stupid enough to cross.

And the things with Natalia are complicated. Her phone calls are uncharacteristically hesitant, and his end of the conversation is (always) garbled. “We’ll talk about this later, James,” she promises, and sheepishly, he agrees.

And Steve is here, knocking on the door. He must not be saving the world from itself, today.

(Or from aliens, which always a viable option, here in the future.)

Sometimes, most times, he doesn’t want to open the door and let Steve in. It’s weariness, he tells himself, or maybe the future’s making him sick, as he waits for the feeling to pass. It doesn’t, it never does. He opens the door anyway.

But he also drags his feet and mutters his answers to the questions Steve starts to pepper him with, the minute he comes in.

_How’s the apartment? Are you settling in? How’s the neighborhood? Quiet? Loud?_

_Fine. Yes. Okay. It’s fine._

And finally Steve pins him with _the look_ , and opens his mouth to say — his mouth forms the word, only to have it cut off, sharply. “James,” he says firmly, almost angrily. He recovers, shakes his head. And he holds up the bag he’s carrying. “I got doughnuts.”

They eat standing over the kitchen counter, with nothing to catch the crumbs. There’s no one there to say they can’t do that, after all. And the doughnuts are good, very good, still warm, rolled in powdered sugar that stings his lips and burns on his tongue, all that grease and sugar, he can feel it going down and clogging his arteries, making his too-old heart _work_ for it.

He sucks at his fingers almost absently, watching Steve as he watches him.

He never eats with his other hand, the metal hand. The oils degrades the finish.

(“He's more machine than man,” says some smart aleck on the street one day, and then shrinks away when he turns and stares. He doesn’t know where that’s from, if it is from somewhere. Popular culture is no longer is his strong suit.)

Steve wants to talk, he’s telegraphing it as clearly as he can. And it’s an odd turn in their relationship that he’s the quiet one here, but he is, and he's taking his time, cleaning up the crumbs with an wet washcloth, not looking at Steve, who starts in on it anyway.

“Fury said...”

“You come here to talk about _Fury_?”

Steve’s mouth snaps shut, sets in a familiar, grim line. He’s about to tell a five-star general to go to hell, to stick his shitty plan where the sun don’t shine.

“No,” Steve is watching him like a _hawk._

(He’s so tired of it.)

And Steve goes on. “We’re worried about you. I’m worried about you.”

He shrugs, and then straightens. He says, “If you’re worried that I’m about to stage a messy suicide behind your back, don’t be. If I wanted to kill myself, I’ve had lots of opportunities to do it by now. Maybe next time I won’t come back.” _Again_.

It’s the longest thing he’d said in weeks. He’d wince at the self-pity in his voice, but —

Steve moves fast for a such a big guy — _of course he does_ — and he’s _there_ , pressing his forehead against his.

He’s gotten used to being shorter than Steve, years and a lifetime ago.

“Bucky, you wouldn’t—” Steve’s voice has got a broken sound to it, and no he _wouldn’t_ , and he shakes himself loose from Steve’s grip, muttering, “It’s James, now.” He’s got to grow up sometime. He’s taken so long to do it.

“James,” Steve agrees, and that’s the last thing he says for a long time.

Without meaning to, really, they’ve made their way to his bedroom, to his bed. It takes less time to get Steve naked than it used to be, and whatever faults this modern world has, it’s certainly easier to undress now, in blue jeans and a t-shirt than it was before.

(He misses suspenders, sometimes, though he doesn’t know why, they had always been a pain to wear.)

As for him, he is — he was wearing a raggedly blue bathrobe that used to belong to Steve anyway, but now it’s been kicked off, joining Steve’s clothes on the floor.

The bedroom too, is different. He can count with one hand, the times they’d done it on a bed, before. No, they’d taken their pleasures on the fly, hurried and rough, hoping not to get caught by the others or by the shelling. It had been a joke between them that if they died with Bucky’s lips around Cap’s cock, they'd both have to come back just to see how the army would spin it.

(They both had a lousy sense of humor, himself most of all.)

He pushes his hand through his hair, which is stringy, oily, and a mess. He’s a mess. He remembers too late that he hadn’t bothered to shower that day, or the day before, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind. The way Steve’s eying his scarred, battered body makes him want to crawl out his skin, because he doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want it all, so he pushes himself at Steve, catching his mouth, and lets his metallic finger tap its own code into Steve’s skin.

Anything to distract him. He’d do anything at all.

And he’s glad to be pushed into the mattress, to take Steve’s lust and return it, sharpened and hurting back to him. Because he’s never been the better man, not ever, not since the days he’d wasted being jealous of Agent Carter, and then spitefully, viciously glad that he _got_ what she _didn’t._

Oh, he never deserved him, never.

But Steve never knew that, and he still doesn’t know so much, that it _hurts._

He wants the weight — Steve’s weight, Steve’s body, Steve’s hopeless, stubborn, ridiculous love, all against his own flagging sense of self, and if everything could make sense for a little while, if he could hold it together for a little while longer, then —

Steve is murmuring his name against his neck, so quietly that he had to strain to hear over the noise of their breathing, over the noise their bodies make, moving together. “Bucky,” he says, “Bucky, _Bucky_.”

And Bucky — James — _whatever_ jams his eye shut, firmly, firmly, because he doesn’t want to see the look in Steve’s eyes, he doesn’t want to see the grief when Steve finally realizes that some soldiers never do come home, where ever their bodies happen to be lying.

But Steve is still talking, begging, soft as his voice can go, saying, “Open your eyes, Bucky, _come on_ , here we are.” And the amazing thing is — he does. He opens his eyes and all he can see is Steve, who looks at him with such naked love that he’d moved, despite himself.

Because, yes, they’re _here._


	2. Timestamp: Six Months Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the timestamp meme, on LJ.

He can go out now. 

Well, he barks, “Black, no milk, no sugar,” to the the waitress -- barista -- who looks like he’s speaking a foreign language. 

(But he’s sure he hasn’t lapsed into Russian. Again.) 

To go with his coffee, he buys some sort of pastry that dissolves quickly on his tongue, leaving only a sticky residue. Someone’s left a copy of _Newsweek_ on one of the tables. It’s got Tony Stark on the cover. And it’s a mark of James’ own personal growth, probably, that he doesn’t do anything more dramatic than make a face, and flip it open.

The article within is as short as Stark’s attention span, vaguely outlining some of his more recent inventions. And then there’s a spread about the Avengers.  
There’s a picture of Stark with an arm flung over Steve’s shoulders, casually possessive. 

_Technology and tradition,_ says the blurb at the bottom. 

James leaves the magazine on the table, and walks back home. The old place, still standing after a century or so worth of rough living, now looks better than ever. The shabby brick exterior had been spruced up and it was a more vibrant shade of red than he remembers. A full renovation, courtesy of Stark Industries. 

James goes up the stairs, and misses how they used to creak. 

Steve’s apartment -- _their apartment_ \-- takes up one whole floor of the building. There are no other tenants. 

It’s furnished sparsely -- neither of them has much of a taste for decorating, and most of the things still have the feel of just being taken out of the box. The only vaguely personal things they have are the photographs, blown up and mounted on the walls. They are of Captain America and Bucky, all steely smiles and slicked-back hair, making the world safe for democracy. 

It had been a gift, Steve had explained. He had been too polite to say no. 

James hates it. He scowls at his younger face, and thinks, _what an idiot._

+

It’s Steve’s turn to cook. 

James comes up from the gym in the basement, and he’s not surprised to find his lover surrounded by cartons. 

Steve looks up and smiles. “Chinese okay?” 

“It’s fine,” James said, stifling a yawn. 

They eat in a companionable silence, Steve’s chopsticks cutting off James as he makes a gambit for one of Steve’s dumplings. After a brief struggle, James concedes. 

“I don’t like the stuff anyway,” he says airly. 

+

 

Later, Steve presses down on him, and whispers, “It’s better now, isn’t it?” 

James stares out into the dark. He still feels adrift, but that’s something he can’t really tell Steve. Not that he really has to -- Steve catches his look, and kiss him softly, promises that it will be better. Steve Rogers, the unshakeable optimist. 

Ah, well. 

+

They never learned to take it slow, and now they’re both too old to learn new tricks.


End file.
